5 strong opinions on Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's Supreme Court pick

Jul 10, 2018 | 8:10 AM

President Trump announced Brett Kavanaugh as his pick to replace Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court.

President Donald Trump on Monday named federal appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh for his second nominee to the Supreme Court. Here are five strong opinions on the choice of Kavanaugh, 53, a favorite of establishment Republicans, to fill the seat being vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced his retirement June 27.

Trump picked the wrong judge

David French, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, writing for The Washington Post:

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“… truth be told, Kavanaugh’s record isn’t the main reason for the flash of conservative regret. Give a judge a paper trail long enough, and he’ll decide cases that ignite controversy. No, the reason for the regret runs a bit deeper. Especially for America’s Christian conservatives, a potential (Amy Cole) Barrett nomination represented a chance for an important cultural moment — an opportunity for the best of young professional Christians to face the worst of progressive antireligion bias and prevail on the largest possible stage.

If “the dogma” could “live loudly” within her, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., famously told Barrett, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, at her confirmation hearing last year, and she could ascend to the Supreme Court, then she would quite possibly become the conservative folk-hero equivalent of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s not just that Barrett is qualified; she is. It’s that conservative Christians see her as qualified and a person they felt like they know. In many ways, her life story was their life story. They, too, belonged to communities of believers like People of Praise. They, too, went to schools like /the University of Notre Dame.

Trump had — right in front of him — the judge who could be populist and principled; the person who could galvanize the base and be an originalist judicial bedrock for the next 30 years.

Attack on health care

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post:

Kavanaugh is a polarizing figure in the health-care debate. Among the things that distinguish him from the other finalists on Trump’s list is his expansive view of executive power — he argued that a president could decline to enforce a statute such as Obamacare even if a court upholds its constitutionality — and his dissent in a 2011 case in which others on his appellate court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.

Republicans are likely to bring Obamacare into the confirmation hearings, too. Some conservative groups opposed Kavanaugh because they think his dissent in the Obamacare case didn’t go far enough in declaring it unconstitutional.

In the long run, Kavanaugh could shape jurisprudence for decades on abortion, gay rights, voting rights, money in politics, guns, presidential authority and more. But his most immediate impact could be on health care.

Judging Judge Kavanaugh

Chicago Tribune Editorial Board:

Nominating Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy will reaffirm approval of Trump among the president’s supporters and disapproval among his detractors — as did Trump’s 2017 nomination of Neil Gorsuch to fill the seat vacated by the death of Scalia.

The Tribune’s policy has been to favor candidates who have demonstrated their fitness on objective grounds. In 2010, we praised Elena Kagan, nominated by Barack Obama, as “a first-rate legal mind, a respected scholar and accomplished administrator.” In 2016, we admired Merrick Garland for amassing a “long and stellar record on the federal bench” that “has won nearly universal admiration.” We opposed Harriet Miers in 2005 because she appeared ill-prepared for the job.

All of us should evaluate Kavanaugh not on how he is likely to vote on abortion rights, the Second Amendment or affirmative action, but on more fundamental characteristics. Predicting how a judge will rule on any particular question is a fool’s errand: Ask conservatives who were shocked when Chief Justice John Roberts provided the deciding vote to uphold Obamacare.

Let’s see some restraint

It would be genuinely depressing if the public debate over Judge Kavanaugh, and the confirmation process, turn out to be focused on one question: How conservative is he, exactly?

That’s a terrible question, because it ignores a crucial difference between two kinds of judges – a difference that cuts across traditional political lines.

Some judges, and some conservatives, insist on judicial restraint. They want judges to back off.

They deplore Roe v. Wade not because of their political convictions, but because the Supreme Court seized on ambiguous constitutional provisions in order to strike down the laws of numerous states. They do not think that the Supreme Court should require states to recognize same-sex marriages, not because they oppose such marriages, but because they think that judges should allow states a lot of room to maneuver.

Restrained conservatives have no enthusiasm for the liberal rulings of the last decades, because they think that judges intruded far too often, and far too readily, into the democratic process. They want judges to have a smaller role in American government.

Shaken, not stirred

John Kass, Tribune columnist, on Facebook:

What's Hillary (Clinton) drinking tonight? I'm going for a martini of liberal tears with three olives (jalapeno/garlic). And shaken, not stirred. Ahhh. SCOTUS. Imagine if she were selecting Supreme Court nominees. I rather not imagine it.